I spent a summer in college working on a lake in New Hampshire as a backcountry caretaker. My job—organized by Americorps—was a mishmash of tasks from sweeping and maintaining the network of trails that crisscrossed the nearby hills and mountains, building docks, monitoring the growth of invasive water species, and (my favorite of all) overseeing campsites.
The organization for which I worked owned 13 campsites—some tent platforms and some cabins—across three areas: teeny Bowman Island, the slightly bigger Moon Island, and a slice of the Belknap Woods (which leads into the Chamberlain Reynolds National Forest) that abuts the south shore of the lake.
The campsites are open to the public, but must be reserved in advance, and on popular weekends like the Fourth of July, the wait list would be dozens and dozens of names long. I rotated between the three areas with two coworkers: a feisty, pint-size rugby player named Kate who wore stacks of beaded rope bracelets on one arm and Luke, a tall and lanky guy with blond dreads, a gentle disposition and a surprisingly loud laugh. Kate and Luke both played the guitar (Luke was so talented that he’d routinely get asked to play at local bars), and in the late afternoons, we’d ride out together to the campsites in our Boston whaler, Luke strumming his guitar and singing made-up folk lyrics that made me double over with laughter while I tried to steer the boat straight.
I’d drop them off at their respective spots and then motor the boat quickly to mine, usually taking at least three tries to nail the complicated maneuvering required to park the boat in the narrow slip of space where the dock was built parallel to a rocky outcropping.
We’d have to make it around to each campsite before sunset, needing to chat with every visitor to remind them of the rules of Leave No Trace camping—pack everything out that you brought in and leave the area just as you found it (or neater)!
The two islands—Moon and Bowman—are small: 30 acres and 23 acres respectively. The ground is soft and packed with pine needles. Evergreen trees grow thickly, the forest interrupted only by clearings for the small campsites. But the Belknap Woods area has a spacious sandy beach for swimming, plenty of open trails, and—best of all—a floating dock that wends through a tangle of wild lowbush blueberries.
You can walk for 1/4 mile on the docks; it’s best to go barefoot as the water occasionally seeps up through the wooden slats. In high summer, the bushes burst with fruit and you can spend hours picking it all.
It was a given between me, Luke, and Kate that the person staying at the Belknap Woods would always bring back blueberries. We’d carry a metal bowl and fill it, or a bucket, or sometimes just hold out our t-shirt and plop the fruit right in, leaving dotted purple stains on the cotton fabric that never quite washed out.
When we brought the fruit home, we’d eat it by the fistful, sitting out on the hill overlooking the lake or in Adirondack chairs on the deck at sunset with a cold Long Trail Ale bottle propped on the railing.
We’d make blueberry pancakes: fat, fluffy, thick ones with buttermilk and whole wheat flour that Kate bought in bulk at the Hannaford in nearby Plymouth.
We’d bake pie: hastily assembling the crust in our tiny, cramped kitchen while Manu Chao played tinnily on the radio Luke kept above the refrigerator. Sometimes Kate would run down to the garden plot we kept right by the shore of the lake to grab herbs, like thyme or basil or rosemary, to bake into the pie.
We had no rolling pin, so we’d use an old wine bottle—the crust was often too thick and dense in places; the filling too liquidy, oozing berry juices all over when we tried to slice into it, never letting it cool first. But it didn’t matter: there was vanilla ice cream and fireflies glittering in the evening light and a warm sugar-scented kitchen and we ate with our fingers, not caring about much beyond right then, and right now.
Wild blueberries are so good for baking, both because of their intense flavor and because of their size. Wild blueberries are tiny, so they tend not to sink into batters and stain doughs. Store-bought conventional blueberries are often much larger, which can be tricky in cakes and muffins. It’s hard to suspend them in a batter, although too many berries in one spot isn’t the worst thing in the world.
There are a few ways around this: you can toss them in flour first, which often helps. But I find the best strategy is to use them in thicker batters, like this yogurt Bundt cake. You’ll notice as you mix the batter that it’s much thicker than most cake batters, so when you fold the berries in, they won’t sink as much.
You can see from the photos that plenty make their way to the bottom though, so it’s not a perfect solution, and if you really care about it, then seek out wild blueberries! If they aren’t in season, Wyman’s of Maine sells very good frozen (wild) ones—you can easily use them in this recipe, but don’t thaw them first.
Blueberry Yogurt Bundt Cake
2 3/4 cups (330g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (240g) Greek yogurt, at room temperature (any % fat is fine)
1 cup (226g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups (346g) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 eggs
2 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 10-cup Bundt pan very thoroughly, then sprinkle granulated sugar all over it, turning it upside to tap out the excess sugar.
Sift together the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and baking soda. Do not skip this step!
In a stand mixer, beat the butter with the sugar until fluffy, about 3 minutes on medium-high speed.
Add the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time, stopping to scrape down the bowl between each.
Add the sifted dry ingredients, salt, and yogurt and mix (carefully at first!) until just combined and no dry streaks remain.
Fold in the berries and scrape the batter into your prepared pan, smoothing the top with a spatula.
Bake for about 1 hour (start checking around 55 minutes)—the cake is ready when a tester inserted into the center comes out without any wet batter clinging to it.
Remove from the oven and let cool fully in the pan for at least an hour before flipping it out onto a wire rack. It helps to run an offset spatula or knife around the very top edges just to loosen the cake slightly while it’s still cooling in the pan.
Freezes well!